Right of Thirst (29 page)
Authors: Frank Huyler
My deepest thanks to my family, Helena Brandes, Deke and Marina Huyler, Scott Huyler, Holbrook Robinson, and Tracy Hardister, to my friends Tim Steigenga, Johanna Sharp, Chris Bannon, Helen Beekman, Beth Hadas, and Jennifer Brokaw, and to those who generously read various drafts of this book even though we've never metâStewart O'Nan, Maria Campbell, Michael Williams, Peter Cook, and Toby Tompkins. To my agent, Michael Carlisle, and to my editor, Jennifer Barth, I'm enormously grateful for your support, encouragement, and good advice.
Special thanks, again, to Janet Bailey and to David Sklar.
An emergency physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Frank Huyler
is the author of the essay collection
The Blood of Strangers
as well as the novel
The Laws of Invisible Things
. He grew up in Iran, Brazil, and Japan.
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for
THE LAWS OF INVISIBLE THINGS
“This is no hospital horror tale, but an earnest inquiry into the ambiguities of illness and the morality of the medical professionâ¦. The intimate tone of Huyler's elegiac voice invites us toâ¦think again about the things we think we know.”
âNew York Times Book Review
“A compelling, curious book with rewards on nearly every page.”
âThe Economist
“Grippingâ¦. Huyler writes such subtly forceful proseâ¦that his novel takes on a cool, uniquely powerful sense of dread.”
âChicago Tribune
“[We] had better hope that our caretakers have meditated on the wisdom and compassion of books like
The Laws of Invisible Things
.”
âBoston Globe
“A cunning meditation on faith and its loss.”
âSan Francisco Chronicle
“Chilling, subdued, and scalpel sharpâ¦deftly plotted, rich with psychological and ethical nuance.”
âPublishers Weekly
(starred review)
Praise for
THE BLOOD OF STRANGERS
“If Raymond Carver had been a doctor, these are the stories he would have written. There are no untarnished heroes here. This is the world as it is: lovely and disturbing all at once.”
âAtul Gawande
“Movingâ¦. What characterizes each of these miniatures is the candor in which they are offered, and their authenticity.”
âSan Francisco Chronicle
“Dr. Huyler's short, intense book treats of only the most important matters: life and death. His prose is nearly invisible, and therefore it allows us to see what he is talking about. And once we see it, we are not likely to forget it. This is a young writer with a big mindâand an even bigger heart.”
âPaul Auster
“The author of these doctor stories is an ER physician as well as a poet, and his work shows the economy and sharp attention that both jobs demand.”
âThe New Yorker
“In lyrical and beautifully controlled prose, Frank Huyler takes us into the world of emergency medicine and in the process manages to leapfrog over all our preconceptions, erase all the stereotypes that television and movies have given us.”
âAbraham Verghese
“He writes so beautifully, in that humble, simple way that is very affectingâ¦It's very compassionate, filled with detail and just splendid, lucid sentences.”
âPeter Carey,
Entertainment Weekly
LSO BY
F
RANK
H
UYLER
Fiction
The Laws of Invisible Things
Nonfiction
The Blood of Strangers: Stories from Emergency Medicine
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters/Landov
RIGHT OF THIRST
. Copyright © 2009 by Frank Huyler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digtal Edition March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-186431-5
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